"What do you mean? You are not among your students," angrily interrupted Johanna.
"You are right," continued Richard, with a quiet smile; "my students are polite enough to permit me to finish a sentence without interrupting me. I will also state, first of all, that this ingenious parable makes no mention of the sister. I do not know what a sister would have said in that affair."
Johanna jumped from her seat in anger; her features seemed distorted with passion. She opened her mouth to answer him, but could not utter a word.
"Shall I go on, mother?" asked Richard.
"Of course; speak on."
"In the first place, the pure spirit which here reveals itself is as fully acknowledged by us as by the pious believers.
"To me the all-important point is, that it illustrates a view of the relation between parents and children, which is completely the reverse of that fostered by the ancient civilization, in which the children suffer for the sins of their parents. Just think of the curse of the Atrides. In our days, it is quite different, and the fate of the parents--their happiness as well as their sorrow--depends upon the conduct of their children.
"The individual to whom such affliction comes is subject to the great and universal law of the newer life."
"Is there anything else you would like to say?" inquired Johanna, in an angry voice. She had some time before that snatched the Bible out of Richard's hands, and had been reading in it ever since, as if she thought that the best way to counteract the influence of the heresies he had been uttering. With all that, she seemed to hear every word that was said.
"I certainly have, if you will permit me. To me this story seems a repetition, in a new shape, of a subject already treated in the same book. The story of Joseph in Egypt is a family history that borders on the region of fable, narrated without any regard to the moral that underlies it, and yet representing to us the reward of innocence. This story which tells of a son who had been a real sinner, and for that reason was not permitted to return as a viceroy amid joy and splendor, but in the garb of a beggar, has another lesson for us. Viewed from the stand-point of the Old or New Testament, or even by our own feelings, it tells the story of redemption. Yes, every human being who falls into sinful ways, shall be obliged to eat the husks;.... but he is not lost. When through self-knowledge his soul has been humbled in the dust, He who never fails will lift him up again, for it is far easier to avoid sin than, before God and one's own soul, to confess having sinned."